DENNIS WILLIAMS wrote:
>
> My company is looking at the future of DBA positions. Our company is
> medium-sized and pretty decentralized, the company divisions having separate
> markets.
> The question has been raised as to whether it would be better to have
> all Oracle DBAs be corporate employees or for each division to have its own
> DBAs. Has anyone on the list studied this issue and be willing to share
> their findings, opinions? I'm looking for the advantages of each. Thanks.
> Dennis Williams
> DBA
> Lifetouch, Inc.
> dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
I read John's answer, and I can only second his 'it depends' conclusion.
I have done a lot of consulting, seen many customers, and I tend to tilt
the other way. One especially interesting experience has been to see,
very recently, at a major bank, the pooling of many DBAs coming from the
back-office and the front-office. In my view, it has been a disaster,
because cuturally they were world aparts; and in the end, even if
knowing each other better has certainly improved relationships between
the DBAs, I think that the global quality of service has deteriorated -
the front-office 'cowboys' getting slower to react, and the back-office
production DBAs becoming slightly less rigorous. With the corporate
approach, you can get a technically very strong pool of DBAs - you
usually get a couple of senior guys and junior DBAs benefit greatly from
this. This can work well in a company built around IT and with a very
strong, common culture. In Telcos it certainly is the way to go. The
main problem is that DBAs become increasingly remote from end-users and
developers (unless development is organised in the same way); they risk
ending-up in a kind of ivory tower, talking a language that nobody
outside the mailing lists would understand.
If your company doesn't define itself primarily as an 'information
company', I would try to check were developments are done. If everything
is bought off-the-shelf you can go for the corporate approach. Otherwise
I'd try to keep DBAs close to developers and end-users, while
encouraging communication between the various DBAs. I have had a phone
call a couple of days ago from an old friend working in the foreign
subsidiary of a major US company - he was greatly dissatisfied with a
small Oracle development he had. His remark was 'if I ask the IT
department, with luck I can have it fixed in a year'. Something you hear
too often.
--
Regards,
Stephane Faroult
Oriole Ltd
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Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
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Author: Stephane Faroult
INET: sfaroult_at_oriole.com
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Received on Sat Mar 23 2002 - 02:23:18 CST
